The bigger picture

The political question of how disabled people are recognised by their society is one of the central questions of modern political theory, even when it is not named that way. Pre-modern political settlements treated disabled people in many ways, depending on culture, period, and condition. Some communities integrated disabled people through religious, kinship, or community frameworks. Others confined them. Others abandoned them. The political variation was significant and the political stakes were always real.

The British disability scholar Mike Oliver developed in the 1980s what he called the social model of disability. His political argument framed disability as a political condition produced by societies that built environments, institutions, and economic arrangements without disabled people in mind. The disability that resulted was a political artefact rather than a personal tragedy. The argument reshaped political thinking about disability across most industrialised countries, including Australia, and the political legacy of the social model is still doing political work in disability services today.

The American disability scholar Alison Kafer has built on the social model and pushed it further, arguing that the political question of disability is also a question of imagined futures. The political assumption that disability is a problem to be eliminated, rather than a way of being to be supported, is itself a political position, contested by disability community and disability theorists. This argument helps explain why the political conversation about disability services is never just about service delivery but about what kind of society Australia is choosing to be. 

The colonial transfer and the era of confinement

Australia inherited British nineteenth-century political settlements about disability. The asylum system, the institution for the feeble-minded, the home for incurables, and the segregated school for the deaf and blind were all British political artefacts, transmitted into Australia largely intact.

The political assumption underlying these institutions was that disabled people required separation from non-disabled society, that their care was best provided in segregated facilities, and that their political agency was limited. The political legacy of this settlement reaches contemporary disability services in ways that are not always visible.

What that political vision excluded is part of the history. First Nations disabled people experienced the colonial settlement in particular ways, including the active political project of removing disabled First Nations children from families and into institutions designed without them in mind. The political conditions of First Nations disability today are shaped by this longer political history. 

The post-war period brought the high tide of institutional disability politics in Australia. State-run mental hospitals, training schools, and residential institutions held tens of thousands of Australians for most of the twentieth century. The political conditions of those institutions, including documented abuse and neglect, are part of the disability services history that contemporary providers operate inside.

The disability rights movement and deinstitutionalisation

The disability rights movement, building from the 1960s onward in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, produced the political conditions for the dismantling of the institutional settlement. The political demand was for disabled people's rights to live in community, to work, to vote, to access education, and to have political voice.

This was a political achievement, contested at every stage. The closure of major state institutions in Australia from the 1970s through the 2000s was the result of decades of disability community organising, of political contest with families and unions invested in the institutional system, and of slow shifts in public political conversation about disability.

The political achievement of deinstitutionalisation produced the conditions for community-based disability services, but it also produced the political question of how those services would be provided, by whom, and with what political voice for disabled people themselves. The political settlement that emerged was uneven, with significant gaps that the contemporary system continues to work through.

The NDIS settlement

The National Disability Insurance Scheme, legislated in 2013, was the political achievement of decades of disability rights advocacy. The political idea behind the scheme, that disability support should be a national insurance scheme rather than a state-by-state welfare programme, was developed and championed by disability community organisations and adopted by the Productivity Commission and successive federal governments.

This was a political settlement, contested at the time and contested again now. The scheme's design embedded particular political assumptions about choice and control, about market-based service delivery, and about the relationship between participants, providers, and the state.

The political legacy of the NDIS settlement is significant. The scheme has produced gains for many participants and significant operational pressure on providers. The political conversation about the scheme's design, sustainability, and relationship to other state systems including mental health, health, justice, and education is sustained.

The present moment

The post-Royal Commission political moment, the political conversation about scheme reform, and the political backlash against feminist, queer, trans, racial-justice, and First Nations recognition are reshaping disability services now.

The Disability Royal Commission, which reported in 2023, surfaced political conditions that had been building for decades. The political pressure on providers, on government, and on community to act on the Commission's findings is sustained.

The political conversation about scheme reform has accelerated since 2023. Pricing, eligibility, plan management, and provider integrity are all in active political contest, and the settlement reaching providers continues to move.

The political backlash reaches disability services through trans-affirming care politics, through cultural safety contests, and through political attacks on inclusive practice.